So, around this time of year almost every weekend has a wine festival, or even a few. One of those weekends is the next weekend, 19th and 20th of May, when several such events are taking place, but one of those events definitely stands out in terms of longevity: The Fair and Exhibition of Zagorje Wines, taking place in Bedekovčina, will be held this year for the 50th time!
Under the tents near the wonderful Bedekovčina lakes you will be able to taste the wines made by over 120 winemakers from Zagorje, enjoy delicacies coming from the region and prepared by some of the best restaurants in Zagorje. The wines made in Zagorje are now held to a high regard, although some not-so-good wines were also made there traditionally, but in the past decade or two a lot has been done to improve the quality of wines from Zagorje. So, many Zagorje wines were able to get awards, recommendations and become hit with the consumers, including well-known favourites, such as Bodren Winery dessert and ice wines which managed to get Decanter Gold medals in the past.
Ahead of the event itself the rating of the Zagorje wines was performed, lead by Professor Ana Jeromel from the Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture. Almost 150 samples of wine produced by the winemakers from the Krapina-Zagorje County were submitted to the rating this year, much more than last year, although the 2016 harvest was greatly influenced by the frost that impacted the grapes in the last year. The results of the rating were already made public (http://kzz.hr/poljoprivreda/sajam-vina-bedekovcina-2017-ocjenjivanje-uzoraka), and on 6pm Saturday evening the champions of the Exhibition will be announced, as the finale of the event (those of you who really know Zagorje wines will probably be able to guess who the champions will be, once you see the results, but don’t spoil it for the rest of us!). What we know now is that Bodren Winery won one “Big Gold” medal at the rating, for their 2011 ice harvest Traminac, and that Sever Zvonko from Klanjec managed to achieve unbelievable success with 3 Big Golds for his predicate wines, Yellow Muscat and Traminac. Around 30 “ordinary” Gold medals were also awarded by the jury, and you will get the chance to taste all of them near Bedekovčina lakes this Friday evening and after 3 pm Saturday, which is where you should be if you enjoy Zagorje wines!
